It is an honor to be here with you and may all the glory be to God My subject Who are we? Reformed people Why reformed people? I asked them: Why do you become reformed? Usually they answer Because of this book Because of that professor I say these are all wrong answers The only right answer is because God predestined me to become reformed and that is the sovereignty of God being lifted up We all become a reformer because of God's grace is upon us Amen! and there's no one can be a child of God or to understand the right theology except the Holy Spirit who grant the grace to us and reformed people have shown our faithfulness and our accuracy to understand the Bible in the past 500 years we have came through all kinds of battles all kinds of difficulties and remain standing to be faithful to the Lord and this should be our principal of studying theology of living as a Christian and to be a faithful believer to the Lord if reformed people are not faithful to the Lord anymore there will be no hope in the world because the only historical movement to declare faithfully to the word of God to the sovereignty of God and to His guidance is the Reformed Movement if we compromise then no one can direct this world Reformed pulpit should be the conscience of the society Reformed ethics should be the example of the society and reformed direction should direct the whole world in it's cultural mandate to submit the whole world beneathe the sovereignty of God God gave us vision and mission and grant us calling What is the meaning of vision? Vision is not what we see Vision is the sharing of God's eternal plans to His chosen people and give them the power to see clearly what God had planned even before the foundation of the world so when we see clearly the guidance of God we see clearly the plans of God in the history Especially in our time so we can respond the Lord then after we listened to the voice of God we see the vision of God then we will have a mission mission is after vision a mission is given from the God who had a promise in us to do something and every promise given by God contains the commandment from God There's no promise without a commandment There's no commandment without promise and that is the reason If God give us the vision and give us a mission He is always with us so we must not be afraid of all difficulties, obstacles, persecutions and kills I'm now doing reformed works Doing my job to obey the guidance of the Holy Spirit in the biggest muslim country in the world and we are building one of the biggest reformed church in the world there We're doing mission impossible without fear negative speaking the only thing we have to be afraid of is fear itself positive speaking the only one we have to be afraid of is God and His punishment upon those who are not obeying Him that is the reason when we are living in this world by the vision, the mission and we listen to the calling the calling is so personal the calling is so real and there was not even one prophet doing the work of God without being clear of the calling and after God called us What is our part? to react submissively to Him man is not what he thinks man is not what he behaves man is not what he feels man is what he acts man is what he reacts before God and this is reformed theology when you react to God respond to God's calling then we can be in the calling to follow the track and the plans of God and the results will be something that lasts forever and ever never be abolished Praise God! Only people who listened to the calling of God and obeyed it in their whole life can keep their work remain forever and ever any theology direct from the contemporary issues cannot last forever only those who act on the eternal word of God will remain forever and ever we reformed people should do what God wants us to do and should write, should think, should debate, should do apologetics according to the principals of the Bible in term of history human beings can only be devided into 3 sorts or 3 kinds The first is the inheritance of history the second is the analyze of history and the third is the transformer and the direction changer of history and reformed people should be on this track because we know history has one master and only one master the master is God the creator the redeemer and the revealer Himself God is the master of history so we are witnessing what history is doing to rebel the Lord and how the Lord is keeping His people faithful to Him until the eschatos, the final goal the final point of the day of consumation Hegel, 1770-1831 once said History teach human being the greatest teaching and the teaching is human being do not want to receive the teachings of history History itself is a teacher and through history we know How we fell, how we denied, how did we rebel God and how God tolerantly and patiently waited for us to come back as a practical reasoning practical will and practical emotion to return and be faithful to the Lord again and what is faith? Faith is the return of the practical reasoning to the truth the practical emotion to the holy love of God and the practical will to God's plan reformed people should lead the whole world by presenting our lives holy and say to the Lord: I am here, I obey You, I follow You and I'll be faithful to Your calling Now, we are at a crossroad of human culture We are facing the most dangerous days since the world heaven and earth have been created by the Lord Since the day of the Renaissance man suppose that human reason is the only means to know the truth and this world is the final goal of our living and also the great Roman achievement have become our model of success and our own power is bigger than God's power God have been marginalized at that time and afterwards came the Reformation Reformation is in between Renaissance and Aufklärung and that is something like a sandwich and in the middle is the only historical movement that is qualified enough to guide the whole human kind through all ages and become the witness of God in term of this We should understand only a reformed tradition is so faithful, so accurate, so brave, so courageous to fight against all kinds of ideologies which are against our Father, our Son and the Holy Spirit, our triune God When I was seventeen years old I tried to get away from christianity I recieved evolutionism atheism dialectical materialism and atheism so I tried to get out from the church and tried to be rebellious to the Lord at that time my heart was so uneasy and until one night I tried to be skeptic toward the skepticism to be a gnostic toward gnosticism and I prayed to the unknown God Are You God? Are You the true God? If You are the true God Give me all of the answers And afterwards I will tell others about the answers and I am willing to go everywhere in the world to proclaim Your truth Finally God answered me and God gave me all the answers of my skepticism, my agnosticism and brought me back to His own throne and since that time I cried, I dedicated my life and said: Lord, I'm Yours forever and ever Give me the power! Give me the strength! Give me the courage! Give me the will of the Sprirt and the guidance to Your path so that I can be faithful until the end of my life I went to Athens I tried to find out where is Areopagus At that time I found that Areopagus is on the spot I suppose that is the place where Paul stood and preached there and I bowed down my head and prayed and tried to dedicated my life to the Lord once again When I opened my eyes after I said Amen then I saw Acropolis was up there about 300 meters away from where I stood and the streets of Athens was beneath my left side At the same time I realized that God have used Paul to stand up at the place in between the religion and philosophy and to lift up the crucifixion of Christ and His resurrection power to be the one and only judge to judge the whole world From that time on I tried to make use of all the knowledge of religion and philosophers and put them infront of the sovereignty of God to be judged by the cross and I know what is said by Paul Only Jesus and His crucifixion This is the only message Which is above all messages that the world would ever need all philosophers and all religion founders can not compare with what we are preaching Because this is the qualitative difference between the of Christ in compare with other religion and other culture and philosophy system qualitative difference is not quantitative difference quantitative difference is not qualitative difference there should be the difference between a qualitative difference and quantitative difference and the difference between the qualitative difference and quantitative difference is a qualitative difference Jesus Christ is the only supreme God Who came from the absolute absolute world into the relative world an absolute absolute is the only absolute Otherwise, all absolute are absolutely non-absolute and Christianity is to proclaim the absolute absolute truth to this absolutely non-absolute truth Try to challenge them! We should not just accept all the challenges We should be challengers 24 years ago, I stood at a pulpit of a chapel in Westminster theology seminary and I said Reformed people should not presuppose that we are gifted in only We should change our attitude of being passive and become active We should be the challengers of the world We must not only be challenged by the world and we should not tell people why we believe We should ask them: Why don't you believe? If the truth is like this If Jesus Christ is the only way Why are you still staying away from the Lord? Why do you still oppose and rebel Him? But how can we present the absolute absolute in this non-absolute world? Once sir Herbert Spencer, 1820-1903 stood up in the conference in London and said I believe that there's nothing absolute in this world then he sat down One young man stood up and said Mr. Spencer Are you saying there's nothing absolute in this world? Yes, that's what I said Do you believe that? Yes, I do Do you absolutely believe that? He is still unable to answer that If a man believe there's nothing absolute He is self-contradictory when he believed that absolutely That is the reason we should be proud we should be courageous enough We should stand again to fight against all this rebellious thinking which is produced from those polluted created and limited reasoning Reformed people should be rational and we must not be a rationalist the end and the dead end of Plato's, 429-347 great philosophy is reasoning is higher than emotion, higher than will and reasoning should guide people to be a philosopher but they could never give us answer We should submit our reasoning power under who? Only Christianity answered us That reasoning power itself is created, limit and polluted that is the reason Only the Holy Spirit who revealed the truth and He Himself is the truth is able to guide the human reasoning to resist all kinds of wrong ideologies Since the day of Aufklärung People thought human beings have come of age but in the ideological of 19th century We see all century with all kinds of ideological system have been proven wrong in 70 years of examination and of experiment in human philosophical and human society Now is the time for reformed people to stand up and fight again and to claim the victory of the truth of God only God is truth Where are we heading to? We are heading to the final victory with the courage and the power of God I hope the theological student are not seeking for the degrees but we are seeking for the power and for the countenance of God Let His glory shine upon us and His Spirit guide us to fight for His truth until Jesus Christ come again